Pests include rodents (rats and mice) which damage structures and crops, and spread bacteria and viruses. They also chew on electric wires and can cause fires.
Natural forces such as climate, natural enemies and the availability of shelter and food affect pest populations. Control strategies are usually a combination of tactics including prevention, suppression and eradication. Connect with Pest Control Mesquite TX for reliable help.
Pest control is usually a matter of taking steps to keep a problem from starting. Preventive strategies include monitoring and scouting. Monitoring is a regular activity, anywhere from daily to weekly, that involves searching for, identifying and assessing pests and the damage they cause. It helps determine if a pest infestation has reached a threshold level that requires action, and it also gives clues to when it is time to start controlling the pest population. Scouting is a specific type of monitoring that includes walking a route in the area being managed, checking for signs of pests such as droppings or damage to plants and looking for places where pests hide like under leaves or inside cracks.
Identifying the species of pest, and finding out what they want (food, water, shelter) is the first step in prevention. This is often done with sticky traps or by scouting. It is also important to learn as much as possible about the pests themselves – what they do, how they breed, etc. This can help to reduce the use of chemicals.
In the case of a household pest, for example, learning about what they feed on and where they live can make it easier to get rid of them with non-chemical methods. In addition, reducing food sources and water sources can make it harder for pests to thrive. This includes storing foods in sealed containers, keeping garbage cans tightly closed, removing trash regularly and caulking or using steel wool to fill holes where pests can enter.
Some pests, such as fungi, bacteria and viruses, spread disease in people, animals and plants. They contaminate food, spoil surfaces and make people sick. They also deteriorate plants and can ruin the appearance of gardens and yards. Control of these pests is essential to protect human and animal health.
Many pests can be controlled naturally with the help of “natural enemies” that live in and around the environment in which they are found. These natural enemies may be predators, parasites or diseases that kill or limit the populations of the pests they attack. By observing interactions between pests and their natural enemies, and by introducing new enemies into an area, it is possible to achieve pest control that is sustainable over the long term.
Suppression
When the environment is a hostile one for pests, they cannot thrive and populations decline. Suppression tactics include physical controls such as trap crops and screens, biological control agents such as predators, parasitoids and disease organisms and chemical controls such as insect growth regulators and sterile insects techniques. These can be applied in combination or in sequence to minimize the need for more drastic action such as pesticides.
In natural environments, predators, parasitoids and other living organisms often suppress or eliminate insect pests through predation or competition for resources. These natural enemies of pests are called “natural enemies” or “biological controls”. They are a valuable ecosystem service and should be conserved wherever possible. Biological controls are often commercially available and can be released in small batches to increase their effectiveness or in a large-scale release to provide immediate control. Examples of biocontrol agents include beneficial mites that feed on mite pests in orchards, parasitic nematodes that kill harmful soil grubs and encarsia wasps that parasitize greenhouse whitefly.
The use of pheromones or odor repellents can also reduce some pest damage. These chemicals mimic a male insect’s odor or a female’s pheromone to confuse the males and prevent mating.
Suppression strategies are most useful when the pest population is small and confined to a limited area. Regular monitoring of a field, garden or landscape will allow the user to determine when the population is getting out of hand and an intervention is needed. Threshold-based decision making combines scouting and monitoring to assess the severity of an infestation, the presence or lack of resistance to pesticides, the failure of traps or screens, the indications of activity by natural enemies and damage to the crop or property.
Integrated Pest Management, or IPM, is an ecosystem-based strategy that uses prevention, monitoring and a variety of physical, biological and chemical control methods to solve pest problems while minimizing risks to people, nontarget plants and other living organisms and the environment. Pesticides are used only after monitoring indicates they are needed according to established guidelines, and treatments are made with the goal of removing only the target organism.
Eradication
Pests can contaminate food, personal items and more. They can also spread harmful bacteria and viruses, which put people at risk of sickness. They can also damage plants and cause rot, reducing their ability to grow and thrive. Pests are often repulsive, frightening or disturbing to look at and some, like cockroaches, bed bugs, house centipedes and spiders, bite or sting. They may irritate or trigger allergies or sensitivities, like asthma. Rodents can also carry and spread diseases, such as hepatitis and cholera.
There are several strategies for eradicating pests. One approach is to prevent pests from entering homes or other buildings, using traps and barriers. Another is to use biological methods, such as parasitoids and nematodes. Parasites, such as flies, wasps and caterpillars, are insects that kill their host by eating or attacking it from the inside. Nematodes, microscopic worms found in the soil, are beneficial and can be used to help control pests by feeding on them. For example, the nematode Steinernema carpocapsae, which is known to be effective against roaches, kills them by injecting their prey with a toxic bacteria that breaks down the insect’s cell walls.
The most commonly used method for eradicating pests is chemical pest control. This includes repellents, fungicides and insecticides. These are typically sprayed on or around plants to eliminate them, but some of these solutions can be hazardous to humans and the environment, and they must be applied correctly to be effective.
Physical traps and netting are other ways to reduce the number of pests, such as rodents and birds. Some of these are very simple, while others are more complex and require a greater level of knowledge about pest biology and behavior. One of the most difficult tasks for pest control professionals is to deny pests the essential elements that they need to survive and reproduce. For example, putting down a layer of mulch where sun-loving plants are grown deprives the weed seeds of the full sunlight that they need for germination.
Integrated pest management is an essential part of ensuring that crops, food, homes and gardens are free from unwanted organisms. These strategies can improve human health and wellbeing, protect against damage to property, safeguard our water supplies and preserve natural ecosystems.
Natural Forces
Natural forces, including weather, predators, parasites, weeds, and pathogens, can control pest populations and prevent them from reaching damaging levels. These forces can be used to complement or replace chemical controls in an integrated pest management (IPM) program.
Predatory organisms, such as birds, fish, reptiles, and mammals, can have a major impact on some pests by taking them out of the population. Similarly, other natural features – such as mountains, bodies of water, and wind patterns – restrict the spread of many pests by providing barriers or by acting as sources of water and shelter. Overwintering sites, and the availability of food and shelter can also affect the growth of pest populations.
Many plant diseases and fungi can be controlled biologically by using organisms that attack only those plants or parts of the plant that are infected with disease. Other diseases, such as viral and bacterial, are managed by the use of plant hormones to inhibit reproduction. Pheromones, which are chemicals released by one insect to attract other insects of the same species, can be used to manipulate insect behavior and promote the presence of natural enemies.
Biological control agents, such as parasitoids and predators, are usually introduced in order to reduce pest numbers. Unlike predators, which often have a wide range of host species, most parasitoids start life attached to an insect as eggs laid on its body or in the form of cysts inside the body. Most parasitoids have very short lives. The most common parasitoids are wasps and flies, but mantis flies, hornworms, true bugs, and lacewings and their relatives are also important parasitoids.
Biological control is most effective when used in conjunction with other control tactics. In general, the goal is to keep pest populations below an economic injury threshold, while reducing the need for chemical control. Accurate identification of the pest and its habitat is critical to selecting appropriate parasitoids and predators for use in a biocontrol program. When the number of pests reaches an economically unacceptable level, and the population of natural enemy populations is too low to provide adequate control, chemical controls may need to be applied in order to reduce the damage to the crop or garden.